Letters to the Editor

• How is it different than...

  [Read the article: Unstable starlets and little-girl voices]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  "Little girl" voices are something that women either do, or exploit (if their natural voices are somewhat high and soft) because it appeals to men. The female characteristics that appear to appeal to men in our culture tend to be those that are super-feminine and childlike -- big eyes, narrow jawlines, shaved legs that look like the legs of children, shaved genitalia, shaved underarms, etc. About the only adult physical feature allow to "attractive" grown up women are breasts -- preferably fake and as prominent as possible, but attached to the thin hairless body of a child.

  Broadsheet has also carried articles about the desirability of new birth control methods that suppress menstruation (ew! icky blood!) so that even women's cycles can be made to disappear, making them...yup, just like children.

  Given that, how can we be surprised that breathy, soft, high voices are also prized? What we really ought to be asking is why the characteristics of child are desirable in an adult, sexual woman....and how that relates to the widespread sexual abuse of children, who of course have these traits naturally.

  Trolls frequently post here about the gross, revolting hideousness of normal adult women -- ew! imagine a woman with hairy legs! A woman with a deep, forceful voice! Strong opinions! who speaks out in class!

  Can anyone who attended a co-ed high school really be in doubt as to which kind of girl becomes the "popular girl" with the boys in school? And aren't Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan eerily just like that kind of popular teenager -- petite or very thin, childlike whispery voices, giggly, beautiful and insubstantial?

  What makes me sad is how the dream of feminism has devolved from an ideal that promised to recognize all the different kinds of beauty in the female universe...to a sterile and limited view that is probably even worse and more extreme than what existed in the '50s -- at least back then, you were not compelled to wax off all your pubic hair to be "beautiful".

  The last tiny vestige of the dream that I have seen in the last 15 years is probably in the advertising for Dove products, a rare glimpse at what natural women actually look like. And that's a pretty lonely exception to the rule. The fascination seems to be to see who can be the most childlike and childish, whisper-voiced, brainless, simpering Princess/Heiress on the block, and it's getting worse if anything, not better.

  Permalink Tuesday, June 19, 2007 11:04 AM